


Speak Slow

by Zee (orphan_account)



Category: Teen Titans (Comics)
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-08-30
Updated: 2005-08-30
Packaged: 2017-11-10 14:23:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/467296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/Zee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's three in the morning in the Titans' kitchen, and they're both awake. Takes place right after Teen Titans 26.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Speak Slow

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Petra for the beta.

Cassie isn’t usually a night-person. Tim knows she goes to sleep by midnight every night she can, and almost always gets up in time to watch the sun rise, like she *has* to. 

Tonight it’s different, of course. Tonight they’re both up at three in the morning; both in the kitchen. Alone.

Cassie hasn’t spoken yet. She’s standing, leaning back against the counter; he wonders if she even realizes that she’s resting one hand on the lasso. Every few moments, her thumb strokes over the not-quite-rope, like she’s petting a cat. It’s vaguely disconcerting.

He’s drinking hot chocolate. It’s not nearly as good as the stuff Alfred used to make, after he got back from patrols, but...

They haven’t spoken, yet. Sometimes their eyes meet, and then she looks away with a strange smile that he’s never seen on her face before. He doesn’t push.

“I know what it means, you know.” He actually jumps when she finally *does* say something, and blames the lateness and—everything else that’s happened. “What it means that he told you, and not me.”

He stares down into his hot chocolate. He couldn’t find any marshmellows to put in it. “He didn’t tell me. I found out at the same time he did.”

She shakes her head. “He would have told you. And maybe he would have told me, eventually, but...” She bites her lip, shaking her head. “I know what it means. I’m not *stupid.*”

“I know you’re not.” That was probably the wrong thing to say, because it makes her shake her head again, angrily, and then she’s sitting down in the seat across from him, leaning forward.

“I just—did you guys ever *do* anything? While.....?”

While you and he were dating. “No.” The lie is harder to tell than he thought it would be.

She smiles the strange smile again, and he realizes that she saw right through him. He underestimated her, has underestimated her — as has everyone, even (maybe especially) Diana. He wonders just how much.

She snorts, and shakes her head again, and the image is suddenly vivid in his mind: the black wig, the biker shorts, the goggles. “Yeah, I’d beat you up, but it doesn’t even matter now, does it?”

The bruises on her face from the last fight with Kon are still fading, and his arm is still in the sling. “No.”

She’s not wearing the headband, and when she lets her head fall forward, sighing, her hair falls down in front of her face. It’s spiky with sweat from when they had to save the day, earlier, and for just a moment she reminds him so much of Stephanie it’s physically painful.

When she looks up again, her face is hard, angry. “It wasn’t your place to hide that from me. From *any* of us.”

His arm twinges. “I know.”

She looks like she wants to stay mad at him, but is too tired. Or... something. He’s not nearly as good at reading her as he could be. 

She reaches out, taking his hot chocolate and sipping it. “I keep thinking. What if he doesn’t come back, you know? And what if... what if him not coming back leads to *that* future?”

“The thought has crossed my mind.”

“Have you... talked to him yet? Asked him to come back?”

“No.” He let Raven do the dirty work. All of them did.

She bites her lip and stares down at his hot chocolate. “Do you... do you think that we could get him to come back if we asked him — together?” She’s speaking slowly and not looking at him. He knows exactly what she means, and it makes his throat go dry.

“No. It’s — I don’t think so.” 

She arches an eyebrow at him, but doesn’t reply. Instead she leans forward, the neck of her t-shirt falling to expose a hint of cleavage, and the look on her face.... reminds him of Barbara.

There are too many women in his life.

“So, what? You’re just going to give up? *Let* him leave?” Her voice is challenging, hard, and—if he hadn’t *already* known what her parentage was, it wouldn’t be hard to guess, from this.

“I can’t force him to come back.” She scowls and starts to speak, and he doesn’t let her. “*You* can’t, either. Not if we want to have any hope of keeping him.”

She sighs, and rests her chin on her fist. He doesn’t know how she does it, goes from looking like a thirty-year-old Amazon to a despondent teenage girl in the space of a moment. “I miss him.”

He swallows. “Yeah. So do I.” It’s completely honest, but it still doesn’t feel like he’s telling the truth *enough.*

She looks up at him, and her eyes are bright and blue and too big for her face. Her features, aside from the hair and the color of her eyes, *don’t* actually look anything like Stephanie’s; it’s just the way she looks at him, sometimes, or a certain smile. He remembers, suddenly, how she became Wonder Girl in the first place: going to Zeus himself and demanding it. 

He wonders if the phrase ‘Wonder Woman needs a Wonder Girl’ ever came up, and has to clench his jaw to keep from giggling helplessly.

“It’s not like I never knew,” she says abruptly, startling him out of whatever mental rabbit hole he’d been going down. “You guys were never really best friends so much as you were....” She makes a vague hand gesture. “Come to think of it, he probably had a crush on you *way* before he had one on me.”

He really doesn’t want to be having this conversation. “He did love you, Cassie. I don’t....” know if it was the way you *wanted* him to.

She makes a face. “We were sixteen, Tim, I didn’t expect an *engagement* ring.” He feels himself blush, and she rolls her eyes at him. “You can be so clueless sometimes, you know that?”

Yes, he does. Especially now. He smiles at her, and the expression only feels *slightly* rusty on his face. “So I’ve been told.”

He must be easier to read than he thought, because suddenly there’s a warm, feminine hand on his shoulder. “We’re going to get him back, Tim. I don’t — I don’t care *what* stupid, pessimistic headspace you’re in, we *are* going to get him back.”

“How do you know?” The childish words are out of his mouth before he can stop them.

In retrospect, the movement shouldn’t have been surprising, but it was. One minute, he’s looking at her face, and the next he’s enveloped in a crushing hug, his face pressed against her shoulder. 

It’s really not unlike being bear-hugged by Kon. 

“I just *do,*” she says into his cape, her voice fierce. “I just do, okay?”

She hugged him like this when his father died, and also right before the last fight. He hugs her back, and it can’t *help* but feel slightly dirty, with the way her shirt rides her up, the way her breasts press against his chest (the way he can feel it even through the gloves and the suit). She leans back, holding him less tightly, and.... 

The kiss in and of itself isn’t surprising. The fact that he initiates is, a little bit.

She kisses back, still leaning across the table to get to him. Her lips are soft and curved and she’s wearing the remnants of strawberry lip gloss, and it’s been a really long time since he’s kissed a woman. Girl. Whichever.

She makes a soft noise in the back of her throat and pulls away, just far enough to look him in the eye. “*Jesus,* Tim.”

She never used to remind him this much of Kon. He’s not quite sure what that means, or what it says about himself or her, or—

She kisses him again, if you could even call it a kiss: her mouth hot and *hard*, grueling, against his, her tongue inside his mouth like she’s searching for something. It’s insistent and it makes him half-hard, more so when she drags her hand down his chest, hard enough that he can feel it *through* the armor.

Then her hands are on him more purposefully, hauling him out of his seat; she’s standing up, shoving the table aside and pushing him up against the fridge. When she looks at him, she’s panting like... like she’s just *fought* someone. And right now, she looks absolutely nothing like the girl in bike shorts and a ratty black wig. 

“We shouldn’t do this,” he says, trying his best to keep his voice calm.

Her smile isn’t nice or pretty at all. “There are a *lot* of things we should have never done, Tim. Probably starting with being *born.*”

He laughs, even though it’s really not that funny. “I suppose so.”

She snickers, too, and then bites her lip. “Of all the things I could be doing right now, *Robin,* this is the least destructive, trust me.”

“Yes.” For him, too. He kisses her again, drawing her closer so that she can feel how much he wants this, how much—and christ, the lasso is digging into his hip. And it’s... *tingling.*

She notices him noticing, and he can feel her grinning against his mouth. Then suddenly she’s gone, long enough for him to blink, and then she’s back again, the lasso in her hand.

She strokes it reverently, *obscenely,* and his dick twitches in his pants. She’s looking at him like she knows exactly what he’s thinking, which... she probably *does,* which is just one more thing to make his knees weak.

She wraps it around his waist and pulls him in again, kissing him open-mouthed and sloppy, and it’s like every sense is suddenly on hyperdrive. So much it almost *hurts,* and the only possible response is grabbing her, pulling her in wildly and pushing up her t-shirt, getting his hands on as much skin as possible. 

Her breasts fit perfectly in his hands, and when he moves to take the gauntlets off, she growls “Don’t,” against his jaw. 

Then she bites him, and he whimpers at an embarrassingly high volume, and it’s a good thing she’s getting the suit off fast, because coming in his tights would be very embarrassing, not to mention messy. 

She touches his cock with the lasso still in her hand, and he shoots into pale skin and golden rope.

“Yuck,” she says, but her voice sounds vague, distant, and it doesn’t matter anyway because his head is between her breasts, and he’s muffling his gasps against her cleavage. He nuzzles her, hard, and she makes an ‘mmm’ sound, and he can hear her playing with the lasso in her hand. 

There are still bruises on her neck, shoulders, and jaw from Kon. He kisses them lightly, tenderly, and she tenses all over.

He hesitates. “Cassie-“

She grabs his broken arm, only hard enough to make him tense all over. “No. Don’t.” 

He ignores the bruises and kisses her breasts instead. She tastes like sweat and strength and *power,* and when he sucks a nipple into his mouth she cries out. Too loudly, and they’re going to wake people up if they haven’t already, but Tim is focused on other things. He hadn’t noticed that Cassie had *particularly* nice breasts, even compared to the other women he knows, until Kon had pointed them out, but he’s certainly appreciating them now.

She seems to appreciate him appreciating them, if the sounds she’s making are any indication. He reaches up to thumb her other nipple, not thinking that he still has the gauntlets on and that might *hurt,* but all she says is “Oh, fuck, yes.” Which... he keeps the gauntlets on. 

When he slides his mouth lower, pressing kisses along her ribcage, the sounds get even more encouraging, and when he drops to his knees she grabs his shoulders hard enough to leave bruises. 

Her pants and underwear are already pushed down to her thighs, and just the sight—it kind of makes it harder to breathe. She’s wet, *so* wet, and he’s only done this once (Steph had come back from a patrol bruised and bloody, and her exact words had been ‘I hate the entire world. You need to distract me out of your duty to the good people of Gotham, because otherwise I really will kill several someones.’), but he remembers the mechanics and what Steph had said felt good.

She’s musky and salty and sweet down here, and he has to just grasp her thighs and breathe in, until she nudges his nose with her hip. He can hear her breathing, harsh and uneven, above him; he slides two fingers inside her and licks around them, between them, sliding in deep and then back out. 

Her breaths come out faster, higher, almost like she’s laughing, and he licks her faster. He moves up, sucking on her clitoris, and feels her hands clench in his hair. Her hips are moving, pressing her flesh up against his face, and it’s mildly claustrophobic, but he just breathes through his nose and sucks harder, digging his gloved hands into her thighs. He can be as rough with her as can and she won’t even feel it; it’s disturbingly.... similar to his experiences with Kon.

He tries not to think about that, tries to shove Kon out of his mind completely. But he can’t do this and *not* imagine Kon doing it (even though he doubts they even got this far), not imagine Kon’s glee at the prospect. It makes him groan against her, and that’s apparently enough to push her over the edge: she’s gasping and convulsing and her hands are *tight* in his hair—he doesn’t doubt that she’s pulled more than a few strands out.

She lets go, and before he can stand up, she’s crouching down, pressing her forehead against his and *shaking.* He can taste her all over his lips, and he knows there’s more all over his cheeks, too. She doesn’t kiss him, just hugs him, hard, and they both slump over until the fridge is the only thing keeping them half-upright.

Her breasts are crushing his bad arm a little bit, and she lets go, leaning back when she realizes. “Oh, I — I’m sorry-“ 

Her voice sounds throaty and raw, like she’s holding back tears. Tim is, as well; they both know that this isn’t the time.

She stands in one swift motion, doing up her pants and pulling down her shirt. Tim gets to his feet as well, adjusting himself as well as he can. It’s not like anyone who walked into the kitchen right now wouldn’t *know* just what they were doing, but.

“He’ll come back,” he says, trying to put as much of his strong leader voice into it as possible.

“*I* know that,” she says. “I just — I’m still not sure if you do.”

He isn’t sure, either.

She snorts like she heard everything he didn’t say. “Yeah, exactly. I’ll see you in the morning, Robin.” 

And then she’s gone, and the kitchen smells like sex and arguments and violence. His arm is throbbing dully, not enough that he feels like seeking out painkillers. He knows himself well enough to know that he’s probably not going to end up sleeping at all tonight.

His hot chocolate is lukewarm; he dumps it down the drain and goes to start a pot of coffee.


End file.
